With Starmer PM of a virtual one-party socialist state I, for one, will feel a great deal safer with a monarch on the throne to remind him who's boss

Many will have agreed heartily with George Galloway, the former Labour MP and cat-impersonator who is now the leader of the Workers Party of Britain, when he called this week for a referendum on the abolition of the monarchy.

They will have backed him, too, if we’re to judge by opinion polls and ­comments online, when he said at the launch of his manifesto that there was ‘lots that is wrong with the monarchical system in Britain’, and that this would remain true even if the Royal Family were ‘paragons of Olympian virtue and strength’.

Indeed, a survey by the National ­Centre for Social Research, conducted on the eve of last year’s coronation, found that support for the monarchy had fallen to an all-time low, with 25 per cent of respondents saying it was ‘not at all important/should be abolished’, and another 20 per cent say it was ‘not very important’.

This meant that no less than 45 per cent of the public — up from the 35 per cent who answered the same questions in 2022, the year of the late Queen’s Platinum Jubilee — either didn’t think much of the institution or wanted to get rid of it entirely.

'I believe the importance of the monarchy will become ever clearer in a one-party state'

A more recent poll, conducted by Ipsos at the end of March this year, finds the proportion who are lukewarm about the monarchy or want to abolish it has grown even higher, with 55 per cent of ­respondents saying either that the ­country would be better off without it or that scrapping it would make no difference.

Well, all I can say is that I reckon those people are wrong. What’s more, I believe the importance of the monarchy will become ever clearer if the latest opinion polls prove right and, God forbid, we wake up in a fortnight’s time to find ourselves living in something like a one-party socialist state — with only a token opposition, the Lords and the King to keep the government’s wilder ­ambitions in check.

Sir Keir Starmer himself, don’t forget, was once a zealous anti-monarchist — though he seems to have suspended his hostility to the throne, along with so much else, since he calculated it might damage his chances of power.

Indeed, he always reminds me of Groucho Marx’s one-liner: ‘Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them … well, I have others!’

Isn’t it far from impossible that if he wins a huge majority, he will revert to his former beliefs and attempt to get rid of both the Upper House and the King?

For the moment, he has said only that he will set about the ‘immediate ­modernisation’ of the Lords, with a long-term plan to replace it, while ­keeping very quiet about anything he may have in mind for the monarchy.

But if we lose the Crown, too, I believe we will have lost something far more precious than many of my fellow ­Britons seem to realise.

Of course, it’s easy to understand what Mr Galloway means when he says: ‘It is a Ruritanian absurdity that the firstborn to the existing monarch will automatically become head of your state.’

At first sight, it looks thoroughly ­irrational that in democratic 2024, the ultimate authority in this land lies with a man who owes his position to a bloodline stretching back through the ages, with one or two zig-zags along the way, to William the Conqueror and beyond.

As for the Ruritanian aspects of the monarchy, these are never more ­apparent than in the annual ceremony of Trooping the Colour, which we ­witnessed last weekend.

But isn’t it often the case that what seems at first sight to be irrational can actually make perfect sense?

Nothing illustrates the point better than a story told by my late father’s great friend, Colin Welch, whom older readers may remember as a ­Parliamentary sketchwriter for this paper during the Thatcher years.

I first came across it in an anthology of the great man’s work, The Odd Thing About The Colonel And Other Pieces, put together after his death in 1997 by his daughter Frances and her husband, my colleague Craig Brown.

In it, Colin told of the night he shared a room in a tumbledown hotel in Ghana with the Left-wing idealist, rationalist and humanist Kingsley Martin, the long-serving editor of the New Statesman.

‘Kingsley’s bed was positioned ­diagonally in the middle of the room,’ he wrote, ‘like a battleship in the board game Jutland. Against my advice, he moved it tidily into a corner.

‘That night there was a terrific storm, with rain bouncing six feet and fireballs hurtling like flaming onions in all ­directions. Kingsley was drenched; before it was moved, his bed had been in the one dry area.’ The moral Colin drew from this?: ‘Respect what seems irrational; it may serve some deep but hidden purpose.’

This sums up beautifully my feelings about the monarchy, and much else besides. Take Trooping the Colour. It may seem Ruritanian, but all that ­pageantry makes for excellent training in military discipline.

Meanwhile, huge numbers enjoy the spectacle and it brings in a fortune for the tourism ­industry. Aren’t these ­reasons enough for preserving it?

Then there’s the fact that ­democratically elected presidents tend to be divisive figures. Think of Donald Trump and Joe Biden in the U.S., or Emmanuel Macron and his hottest rival in France, the Right-winger Marine Le Pen. For every citizen who supports one or the other, you will find another who can’t stand his or her guts. Wouldn’t the same go for a ­President Farage or, perish the thought, a ­President Blair?

Britain’s hereditary, constitutional monarchs, on the other hand, have always tended to unite the country, bound as they are to steer well clear of politics.

Certainly, the King has his critics. But most don’t see him as any threat to their wellbeing, appearing to be ­motivated simply by envy of his supposedly ­luxurious way of life at the public’s expense. Indeed, ‘scrounger’ appears to be their favourite term of abuse for him.

Well, I don’t know about you, but I can think of a great many things I’d rather do at 75, while suffering from cancer, than stand in all weathers to take the salute at the Trooping, dish out gongs at endless award ceremonies or open yet another community centre.

Keir Starmer once a zealous anti-monarchist seems to have suspended hostility to the throne

Oh, and if you think a president and his entourage would cost us less than the £1.29 per person the monarchy cost us last year, you may be in for a shock.

As for political power, of course the King has almost none of that — let alone the enormous power enjoyed by his predecessors before the Glorious Revolution of the 17th century clipped the monarchy’s wings.

But the great thing is that as long as he remains our head of state, signatory of all our laws, fount of official honours and chief of the Armed Forces, he stands in the way of any over-mighty politician with ambitions to take the roles for himself.

Of course, we’ve yet to see what sort of Prime Minister Sir Keir will turn out to be if voting goes as predicted in a ­fortnight’s time.

All I will say is that his shameless plan to rig future elections, as he pledges to give impressionable ­schoolchildren the vote, inspires little confidence in the modesty of his ambitions.

I, for one, will feel a great deal safer with a monarch on the throne to remind him who’s boss.